Works

The circle and square are perfect geometry. One inscribed by the other forms a unique relationship that not only informs art and culture, but exists abundantly in nature. Throughout art history the circle is meant to represent the divine and the square mankind. Combined they represent the reconciliation of the heavenly and infinite with the earthly and man made.

In this exhibition, six square paintings surround an installation sculpture made up of five cylinders that hang suspended from the ceiling. Of the six paintings on 5’ x 5′ wood panels, three portray a cross-section of a fallen tree and three portray a human iris’ characteristically blues. These orb images like the mandala metaphor the earth and planets, a complete circle and cycle. A view of the universe from the human perspective.

The cross-section paintings portray three of the thousands of trees that fell during a devastating windstorm in Vancouver. They visualize the rings of each tree, the marks of it’s age and the passage of time. Their combination of materials and subject form a “double entendre”, tree on tree, wood on wood. One unable to exist without the other.

The three Iris (eye) paintings are a “family portrait”, each with unique characteristics defined by age and genetics. They are paintings that in an infinite cycle look back at you as you look at them. It is an endless gaze of limitless eye contact. A gesture that is sometimes delivered or received as confrontational and sometimes inviting.

Salvage is an installation sculpture that mimics and manufactures trees by using shredded paper catalogues from a previous exhibition. Five, nine foot, clear vinyl, cylindrical tubes stuffed with this recycled paper, hang from the ceiling and are positioned to represent a small forest of trees, composed with just enough space to walk through and experience. It is a man made microcosm of nature paradoxically made from its own resources.

The forest is an environment that perfectly defines and describes the endless pattern of the cycle of life. It’s flora and fauna display countless variations that form to create natural mandalas. In Perfect Geometry, circles and squares combine to make paintings that orbit the sculpture Salvage, and symbolize the perfect symmetry found in nature. Salvage is the axis fabricated to suggest nature’s cyclical pattern of life and death, destruction and renewal. These qualities mirror the complexities of the “creative process”, as success and failure coexist despite uncertain results.  Art, nature and creativity exist and relate in endless combinations each linked in unique relationships. Each combination is a compass that directs and redirects our efforts to sustain and control the natural world and ultimately define our place in it.

Laurie Papou, 2015

Storm is a body of mixed media work that uses themes of nature to examine humans’ resilience to adversity and change. Nature exists in a constant state of renewal, rebirth and death. One reality replaced by another. Nature’s power is the life force that determines survival of all living things. Human living mirrors nature through the power of self reinvention and in excepting the absence of control.

In paintings titled Orb One, Orb Two, and Orb Three, the tree’s growth rings symbolize age, time and history. The saw blade marks suggest human presence and interference. Sexuality in the form of fertility is implied through subtle images within the details of each of these paintings.

In the works titled Pursuit One through Pursuit Four, the placement of sperm-like pressed flowers heading towards the center rings of a tree, echo fertility and symbolize the pathways of creation.

The vertical tree slices in sculptures Spin and Body, are phallic in shape. Combined and layered with video images and sound, they embody the sacred and profane dichotomy present in the natural world.

In sculpture installation titled Salvage, long plastic tubes stuffed full of shredded, unwanted art catalogues, suspend from the ceiling to represent a stand of trees. The recycled catalogues, repurposed into an installation sculpture, metaphor of the cycle of life, uninterrupted, everlasting and perpetual.

The aftermath of destruction from a windstorm that devastated portions of Stanley Park’s forests was the catalyst for this work. The image of countless mature trees laying one on top of another, ripped from the ground by the violent power of the wind, was a humbling sight. The apocalyptic scene left no confusion about who or what had control.

New is a body of mixed media work that redefines my creative strategies and shifts focus from human relationship issues to human experience. Rather than traditional light sources, paintings bathed in the flickering glow of projected video images are newly animated with action and sound.

In mixed media paintings, Burning Bush and Slow, the combination of still and moving images accompanied by sound, heightens both the personal and universal narrative. These mediums and images exist in relation to each other and would have no substance on their own. For example, in Burning Bush, I made a painting of a bush, set it on fire and filming the event. The piece pairs together both the charred painting and the video of the painting burning.

The piece Spin metaphors life’s dizzying challenges. A vertical slice of a tree layered with the projection of tree tops in an endless spinning cycle, creates a developing feeling of vertigo with each rotation, and is reinforced by the relentless sound of the wind.

Suck uses surround sound to create experience and define space. A room absent of light isolates and enhances the rhythmic sound of a nursing infant, as it increases in layers of repetition.

In New, mediums coalesce with universal themes of life and death to create works layered with meaning. Each piece looks at the relationship between experiences of the spiritual and temporal realms, the foundations of existential thought.

Laurie Papou, 2007

Bambi is a body of work that unites my established medium, painting, with installation and video projection. Disney’s tale of the death of innocence, Bambi, brings forth childhood memory, composed, like surrealism, of fantasy and reality. In my interpretation of this classic, each in a series of four paintings on wood panel develops into the next. As in the film, a narrative unfolds in the relation of the images to one another.

True to the film version of this narrative, Bambi, the vulnerable fawn, and his mother, the ill-fated doe, are central characters in each painting. However, in a departure from the animated versions, mine are realistically portrayed north American white tailed deer. The third character, a crouching female figure, referencing Fischl’s scene V, from his 1994 body of work, alludes to the “death of painting”controversy. The action in the narrative, that of being hunted, evokes response from both the animals and the female figure. The characters dodge incoming arrows, conscious of the constant threat of death. 

The bleached portion of wood panel on which the female figure is rendered bathes her in light, suggesting a tense separation between the figure and the scene to which she is privy. She witnesses the action and reacts to it ominous tone, but exists more as a specter then a participant.

In the video projection, the work resolve itself. The final painting of the four features a life-sized, orphaned fawn, curled up asleep. Projected onto the painting and blanketing the surrounding wall, the image of the female character rises slowly, triumphantly, from her crouched position and strides out of the scene. The female figure becomes animated and the larger than life, the embodiment of strategic survival and persistent strength.

Bambi explores new thematic territories as animals replace humans as subject and film narrative replace allegory. These shifting priorities parallel the tension and imbalance amongst the mediums. Using a photo-realistic painting style and engaging in surrealist ideology through composition and video projection, Bambi unites tradition and technology, fantasy and reality, and creates a visual language for that union.

Laurie Papou 2002

Vanity Suite is an installation of four life-size figurative paintings that engage both the religious and art historical interpretation of the Three Graces.  

According to Christian theology, Faith, Hope and Charity name the theological virtues that are divine gifts to those, upon whom, God bestows his grace. They are the three Cardinal Christian Graces.
According to Greek mythology the Three Graces are the goddesses of joy, charm and beauty. They presided over pleasurable social events and brought joy and goodwill to both God and mortals alike. Together with the Muses, they sang and danced to the gods on Mount Olympus. The graces were rarely treated as individuals but always together as a kind of triple embodiment of grace, joy and beauty. Like the muses, they were believed to endow artists and poets with the ability to create beautiful works of art.

In Vanity Suite, one male and three female figures, surrounded by the ruins of a west coast clear cut, are engaged in the drama of a striptease. On three separate paintings female figures, each in a stage of undress, stand alone in this barren landscape. Across the room on the opposing wall, a clothed male figure stares back at them, as he steps out of the clear-cut and into the forest beyond. No longer desiring the graces gifts or the goddesses charms. The scene is interrupted though when a viewer enters the gallery space and unknowingly steps into the middle of the “action”. Consequently becoming the cause of it’s completion. 

This is a landscape of destruction and compromise that describes innate human behaviors. The work’s focus is on the voyeuristic pleasures that objectify the genders and contribute to the formation of sexual identity. It is a metaphoric performance about virtue, goddesses and muses. A stage that displays vulnerability, confrontation and confusion within the shifting nature of sexuality.